That Pesky Language Requirement was Just as Pesky in 1955

Every week, The Crimson publishes a selection of articles that were printed in our pages in years past.

April 24, 1940: Anti-War Chest Drive Announced by Student Union

Announced by the Harvard Student Union after its executive meeting last night is a new drive to raise funds for a national Anti-War Chest to be used in the cause of peace.

G. Robert Stange '41 of Lowell House is in charge of the Harvard drive which will consist of the sale of "peace bonds" intended to supplant the Liberty Bonds of the last war.

Stange said, "Instead of spending money for continuing a senseless war, the investors in the peace bonds will be contributing to making an allied front of inside information on the futility of a new one."

April 25, 1947: Count 'em—Forty Beautiful Girls Cavort in College Pool

"Alumnus Aquaticus," anonymous donor whose check for $350,000 hastened construction of the Indoor Athletic Building Pool in 1930, probably never anticipated what goes on there now every Monday night. Monday night is "ladies' night" at the natatorium.

From 7:30 to 9:30 o'clock girls connected in practically any way with the University can splash around in the pool's 225,000 gallons of chlorinated water, whip out a bottle of Gaby, close their eyes and make believe they're back at that favorite beach or lake—all for four bits.

Designed in 1934 as a November-to-May form of recreation for wives and daughters of University officials, the Monday night program now embraces students' wives and employees of the University as well. Last year, with wives dominating attendance, the program rolled right on through June and July.

April 26, 1955: Verbal Vigor

Student interest, at Harvard, often determines the educational bill-of-fare. But if the Faculty responded to student apathy in elementary languages, required German, French, or Spanish courses would long have gone the way of compulsory Rhetoric, Logic, and Semantics. Yet the language requirements remain to blight the freshman year, because the Faculty rates highly the value of language well-taught—although the College has consistently failed to take steps to bring good language teaching to Harvard. The apathy of student and teacher alike spoils the value of the courses. Since the course seem sure to remain, the apathy deserves attention.

April 25, 1975: Cloudy Discourses

There's a myth at Harvard that undergraduates are ignored by departments and faculty members because graduate students are getting all the attention. In the Philosophy Department though, even the graduate students are ignored. Philosophy grad students are very low on faculty members' list of priorities: research, writing, coordinating national philosophy clubs, organizing conferences, editing journals—all come before students. One can imagine where undergraduates stand, then.

April 23, 1977: Soviets Deny Wald Entrance to Conference

Soviet authorities barred George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, from attending a scientific symposium on Moscow on Thursday.

The symposium was organized by dissident Jewish scientists seeking to emigrate from the Soviet Union.

Participants at the gathering included ten American and Canadian scientists that Soviet officials warned not, to attend, but did not attempt to stop. The officials turned back Wald and Robert Goldberg, a scientist from the National Institutes of Health, when they tried to leave Leningrad for the conference.

—Compiled by Amna H. Hashmi